


i’m here at the beginning of the end, the end of infinity with you

by nachttour



Category: Homestuck, MSPA
Genre: AU, Bro saw a therapist, Kind of hatefucking?, M/M, Really tense interactions, Timeline Fuckery, alt-death, depressed character, gun mention, nobody learned how to use their words, non-explicit consent to sexual activity, past Bro/Pop Harley, un-erotic asphyxiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-06-28 04:18:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15700011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachttour/pseuds/nachttour
Summary: “You’re gonna get mad if I dickslap you. You’re already down there. Could we get this show on the road?” John curled his toes nervously, Bro could hear the movement behind him. Stretching hands up so that he could cup John’s ass, he smirked. “What’cha gonna do if I say no?”A moment passed before he spread his hands out in resigned acceptance. “I guess I’ll just die.”





	i’m here at the beginning of the end, the end of infinity with you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historiCthrenody (Cookieluv246)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookieluv246/gifts).



> The only reason there's a noncon flag up there is that no one in this story is good at giving express consent to the sexytime that happens. If that's a thing that makes you as a reader uncomfortable here is my express permission to miss this fic. Prompter asked for all that I love and nothing that I do not. I hope you enjoy :D

Hands settled around his throat and Bro lay back, tilting his chin toward the ceiling and accepting the slow embrace of death. His hands stayed limp at his sides. Beneath his shoulders the fabric of the sheets had bunched up into an uncomfortable knot. Apparently death would not come from a bar crushing his windpipe at the gym as he had come to expect; but rather from a pair of hands wrapped like a vise around his throat. The points of pressure where John’s thumbs bit into his neck felt like cold stars burning against the rush of his own pulse. 

The air around them felt like a living thing, something intentionally shying away from him and escaping his lungs. Cold pressed in and around them. Dude never was warm - his hands felt like they had been caught outside in the winter wind. It made Bro want to hold them, and to chase away all of the cold with the heat that he had accumulated from innumerable New Austin summers. Fuck, he’d experienced enough heat in his life for a whole family, and he sure as shit could spare some of it for the guy choking him out.

Maybe this wasn’t the right time to be considering that at all. 

No time better than the present? It was one of those stupid statements that floated around and meant nothing. There should have been more fight in him than this, but it felt fine to accept the strong finality of the body pinning him down against the mattress. 

It had, after all, been a strange month. 

* 

The building off of Mesa and Clock Road had a reputation. They had named it Paradise Suites or something equally asinine. The building changed management companies several times thereafter and there was nothing remotely divine about the end result. The remaining occupants had dwindled to a group of troll apiculture enthusiasts who occupied the sub-basement, a handful of college students, and a population of geriatric shut-ins who had claimed the ground floor as their territory. Bro fit in none of these discrete categories. The term ‘artist’ fit just as easily as ‘independent contractor’. He wore both hats interchangeably — both were embroidered with custom logos for his various businesses. One had to have a uniform, his happened to be a good pair of black jeans, white polo and ironic headwear. 

Being that the building had a well-deserved reputation for being a shithole, it was always a great surprise when another individual joined its esteemed ranks. Bro made note of the change first as the moving truck coughed its way up the street in the morning before he hit the gym. They did not manage to avoid the pothole and there was a clamorous noise as whatever was in the bed of the truck jostled. There was a muffled twang of a piano being bounced. Bad news for the musician - that would have to get tuned. Boxes began appearing in the lobby toward the end of the day and made their way up with movers closer to the evening. This caused some disruption of the nocturnal neighbors routines. Their apparent destination was the top floor, which meant that he would be getting a new neighbor. The empty cage piqued his interest — its occupant was not in residence when it made its ascent on the elevator. It was too small to fit a person so not nearly as interesting as it could have been. 

The whole matter left his notice until the weeks’ end. 

The routine for Sundays was simple. Hit up the fabric store down at the intersection off of Girder and plunder the discount bins. The more garish and ugly the fabric, the better. The weekend tended to yield remnants from quilting projects and the comings and goings of the week. 

 

After that stop was made it was time to visit The Depot corner market and talk shit with his neighbor, the counter-troll that never seemed to go home. Once soda and Hot Pockets and a snack-size bag of extra cheesy Doritos (pizza flavor Hot Pockets - no substitutions desired or accepted) had been acquired, back home to draft patterns for his latest plush designs and consider a meal plan for the rest of the week when he wasn’t shoving shit food in his face. The delicious physique he had going on wasn’t going to maintain itself but cheat days were paramount to a good life. 

Instead of following the usual trajectory of events, Bro came up to find the newest resident of the apartment floating three feet in the air with his bare toes pointed down toward the dingy auburn carpets. 

_Not exactly something you see every day._

Flicking eyes up to the ceiling he couldn’t find any anchor points for harness-wires. Nor was there the telltale sparkle of psiionics, haloed around him. Leaning to the side to deposit his groceries on the floor, Bro crept forward. 

The figure hovered, their attention fixed out of the window as if they would be tested on whatever it was that they were looking at. Raising a hand to reach out and touch the individual’s back Bro jolted when their voice cut through the silence of the hall. 

“It isn’t polite to get handsy with strangers.” 

The fact that he jumped made him want to shove them through the window and see if they would keep floating. Instead he took a step back to pick up his groceries. Now that he looked closer, his gravity-indifferent neighbor was something worth study. Black hair fluffed up everywhere as if a capricious wind had run through it and left it to its own devices. Shoulders as broad and wide as a horizon, muscles filling them out that said mystery dude liked to lift heavy objects. Not too bad at all. Obviously didn’t hit the gym in the way that he did - but it was a functional sort of strength. Who the fuck was he kidding. He loved men so much — particularly men who had a chance of taking him in a fight. 

“Cute of you to assume that I’m polite.” 

His keys jingled as he pulled them free of his pocket. Just a few more movements and then he would be in the apartment and away from all of this awkwardness. There was a reason that he stayed in his room. When there was a script, when he knew the game plan, if there was a mission, all of those were acceptable scenarios. If any of those conditions could be met then he was effective as hell. His unit had thought so at least. This was so far off script that he didn’t think he could improvise around it. He’d have to study the new arrival. Get a sense of him, work around the mystery of why it was that gravity seemed to have forgotten that it applied to solid objects.

 

“You’re just as curt as the landlord said that you were going to be.” 

The neighbor stepped out of the air and Bro felt his stomach clench and his insides constrict. Oh no. That face, the grace and looseness of his movements. Intrusive memories overlaid the present and Bro blinked slowly trying to clear it away. They could be brothers. 

Once upon a time he had been someone’s brother. Once upon a time he had dated a guy with eyes like emeralds and a smile that could eviscerate a complete stranger at twenty paces. There was a ghost of that guy in the mystery man that faced him. Something about the winsome uptilt of the floating stranger’s smile reminded him of the brother that he had lived with when they had both been too fucking young, and a man that he had tried his best and failed to love. 

The lock clicked and Bro stepped through the door, closing it firmly behind him. 

*

The floating stranger’s name was John. A very pedestrian, very blank name. Something that could fit a thousand faces and describe none of them. 

John. 

That detail is gleaned from a careful examination of his new neighbor’s mail. He shouldn’t look through other people’s things and he understood that on an intellectual level. It would be that much easier to be good if it wasn’t so damn easy for him to snoop. The mail came in bundles and there are only three of them on his floor. Most of the apartments on the top floor were victims of a particularly nasty issue involving outdated sprinkler systems and black mold. Health considerations ushered more cautious residents into other buildings held by the management company. The more stubborn ones had been relocated to the lower floors of the place. Short of having the roof physically collapse on him, Bro was not overly worried about black mold. It was not the thing that would take him out. Given that stubbornness the top floor cohort consisted of him, Kassat the troll that worked at the convenience store, and John. It was easy to figure out who the new mail belonged to. The fact that he had memorized the names of all of the other residents helped. It never hurt to be sure of where one stood at any given time. That wasn’t obsessing, instead simply an overabundance of caution. It was something that he had asked his therapist about. She wanted him to stop stalking people and to respect boundaries. If that meant deescalating his behavior down to simple surveillance of publicly available information, she would take it. 

_John_. 

His new neighbor did strange things at strange times. For the first two days he remained in his apartment. Carapacian delivery individuals brought up takeout or groceries. One of the things that was included in the groceries appeared to be a rabbit-pellet mix. That meant that the cage was for a small lagomorphic companion. 

Halfway through the week Bro heard him clattering down the hallway in a burst of activity, -humming to himself off-key and exuberantly. 

The piano was another oddity — how the hell John had gotten the movers to get the thing up to the apartment remained a bit of a mystery to him. John was lucky that Kassat lived near the elevator and was a heavy sleeper, otherwise she would have come at him for playing loud music in the early evening. Songs drifted through the thin walls at three and four in the morning toward the weekend. The melodies meandered-sometimes symphonic and thundering, other times wistful and gentle. 

_**John.**_

The mystery of the new person and the pull of him felt like the force of gravity or a wind at his back pushing him forward to learn more. To see and dissect. 

The stasis between them changed when he encountered said neighbor at the top of the stairs. Bro avoided elevators as a general rule, and the exercise of ascending the many flights to the top floor served as a good base workout. Standing two steps below the resident musician, he inclined his head in greeting. 

John grinned at him - and that smile could charm birds out of trees. Gap-toothed, open and guileless. Fuck he was gay — John reminded him powerfully of another person. Someone from another lifetime. Their builds were similar, the new neighbor had the same shoulders that were meant for a good brawl, or maybe lifting heavy rocks off of buried treasure. The sheer magnetism of the smile happening there was another point of data showing similarity. Might have just been the J-name, but there was more to it than that. The animation of John’s movements and the way that he seemed like he might be just on the verge of telling a scandalous bit of gossip harkened powerfully back to someone else. 

In moments like this, moments where he fucking forgot how to be a human being, he missed the sun-soaked hotel lobby where he drank lukewarm beer and Jake sipped on a mint julep, mustache swishing as he cracked a smile. That had been another country, that had been when he was in the service. It was convenient. He had been young, and Jake older than his stories and his smiles had made him seem. Just for a second they had carved out something quiet and comfortable in a bordertown near active combat. Then he had gone home, and the sparse letters from foreign locales had stopped coming. 

It was clean because it was simple. No expectations. No ties. Just fucking on a rented bed and drinking until the sun burned red-bright along the horizon. 

It still hurt. 

Standing in front of him was an open door, not a ghost. 

“Hey. I think it’s about time that we actually said hello for real. At this point it’s just getting weird.” John thrust a hand out in front of him. “I’m John Egbert. Who are you?” 

There was weight in John’s regard - Bro wondered if it was not so much a question of ‘who are you’ as it was ‘who are you pretending to be?’. He was _seen_ in a way that made him feel uncomfortable. 

There was nothing for it. Grasping the offered hand and shaking firmly, Bro felt a little twist in his gut at the feel of the strength of John’s grip. What would that feel like wrapped into his hair and pulling tight against his scalp? How would his fingers feel sliding against his piercings and dragging the skin of his cock along with them?

_Jegus screaming Strider, get yourself together._

_**“**_ Broderick Strider. Dirk or Bro is cool. You take your pick on what feels best in your mouth.” 

The wattage on John’s smile amped up. 

“Cool. Bro it is. Sort of matches the whole…” John gestured up and down, encompassing the whole of him, “-thing you have going on here.” 

“Cool cool cool. That is pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. Having a ‘thing’. An undefined and amorphous state of being that could or could not be quantified but instead is just going to have to remain indistinct. To name it is to kill it.”

 

John’s head tilted in something like affection. “You remind me so much of Dave. Do you know someone named Dave? Strider’s kind of an interesting last name. You don’t hear it a lot.”

Bro’s stomach clenched into a horrified knot, and John continued after a beat. “Weird huh? Anyway. Nice to meet you. I’ve gotta go down and catch the bus — I’ll see you around.”

Nodding woodenly Bro stepped up and past John. The sound of footsteps bouncing down the stairwell receded until they faded away entirely. Bypassing his apartment Bro went to John’s door. Resting his fingertips lightly along careworn brass, he weighed his options.

 

Stalking was bad. This was something that he and Pilar had worked on extensively. It was the reason that his brother had left the house thirteen years ago and declined to leave a forwarding address. Stalking was the reason that Jake had broken things off with him — even though he was older and wiser and theoretically could have done any number of things to bring Bro back into line. They could have been so good. 

_I want to know everything about you. I want to see inside of you. I want to understand how you work. How I could unmake you. I want…_

The door was unlocked. Turning the knob Bro stepped inside. 

Whatever he had been expecting was not the place that greeted him. Boxes sat stacked along the walls. The piano had been set up against a wall near the window — a rug laid out carefully under it to protect the flooring from the weight of the instrument. Moving slowly through the space with the intent not to disturb a thing, Bro took in the forest of takeout stacked up near the trash can and several bags of garbage ready to go down to the dumpster. The fridge yielded little to observe: a cluster of water bottles and a half empty container of orange juice. Apple-slices sat in a container shoved to one side. 

John’s bedroom was similarly uninformative. The bed was a rumpled mess. Clothes seemed to be in a box that was shoved over into a corner. A photograph of some older man who screamed ‘corporate business professional’ sat enshrined on the bureau in a place of honor. Bro guessed parent, but had no other clues to confirm or deny the suspicion. 

The edge of the bed was calling and he took the invitation. He lay back, feeling his hair crunch against the giving softness of jersey pillowcases. The sheets needed a wash. Bro caught a mix of ozone, Old Spice, some sort of shampoo, and sweat. Turning and setting his glasses to the side, Bro rolled over and pressed his nose into the pillow. He imagined what it might be like to put his nose in John’s hair, what the texture against his lips might be like. Would it be coarse and wild? Or was that just too many days without a shower or two shits given about the position it was in at any given time? 

_Stalking is not how you connect with someone. Freely given information is how you actually achieve intimacy. Why are you so afraid, Dirk?_

Ugh. Pushing up off the bed Bro found his feet again. The bed was a rats-nest of tangled comforters and sheets. His brief visit would not be noticed if this was the ambient level of care that John exhibited about his space. Blinds stayed pulled tight over the windows. It had been a week since his neighbor had moved in. Maybe this was just a temporary stop between one place and another. 

Coming back out of the bedroom gave him a different angle of the apartment, and he saw the intended recipient of the rabbit pellets. The bunny in question had the run of the second bedroom. There was a baby-gate blocking off the doorway but the rest of the room had been left open for its inhabitant. A litter-box sat unobtrusively in a corner and a small structure made of cardboard boxes seemed to be a place where the bunny could go and hide. For the moment the creature in question had sprawled out with decadent ease in a spill of moonlight. It turned its small face toward him, nose going double-time as it assessed the threat of his presence. It turned and retreated into the cardboard house. 

Snorting to himself Bro passed back through the rest of the apartment and let himself out. 

*

Dreaming of a guy usually was the point at which he had to do something about it. John visited his evenings two times in a row, sometimes in bed with him, sometimes installed on the couch and voraciously chowing down on popcorn while the light of the screen lit up the panes of his glasses and the delightful curve of his cheeks. 

Laying back in boxers and letting the light of the afternoon sun trace its way across his stomach, Bro considered how likely it would be that dreams could come true. He was not a domestic man. There had never been dreams of a husband anywhere in his mind. Still… the allure of having another living thing with him, someone that might give him shit for staying up for forty-eight hours in a row, who might eat pizza on the couch with him—well, there was something to that. Pets were not his thing. If there was someone there with him though…

It was more than likely not going to be his neighbor! 

There was a thump from John’s side of the wall. Drywall and maybe some wires separated them. It would be so easy to put a camera into the vents. 

A second thump followed the first. In his mind the footprint of the apartment sat like a map in a video game. He could track John’s progress through his space throughout the day, if he really listened.

 _Stalking is not intimacy._

Before he could think better of it, he hauled a tee shirt over his head, ran fingers through his hair to make sure that it was still in order and walked into the hall. The trick was to just keep moving — forbid doubt to creep in. Knocking on the door caused it to swing inward. A few additional thumps joined the ones that he had heard earlier. Winding his way through the apartment Bro leaned against the doorway of John’s bedroom. 

Tendrils of fog curled around his feet and the atmosphere of the apartment was sultry. Condensation beaded against the window sills and dripped down at random intervals. John hovered in the middle of his bedroom — still like a storage space instead of a place to live. His eyes shone, causing the lenses of his glasses to reflect the source of light back toward his face. Wind swirled around the apartment, causing partially-secured posters to flutter against the walls. A few books and other small objects orbited with him and the wind contained in the room pulled at his clothing and buffeted his face. It was like a tiny tornado without the noise and damage to accompany it. 

_Just… ask. Go with it._

“Why are you so afraid of the ground?” 

Something about John made him tense, beyond his apparent allergy to gravity. John made him think of the moments in a storm while enough charge built in the clouds for a lightning strike. All of the force of wind and pressure distilled down into the body in the room with him. It was a bizarre thought and like most of his intrusive thoughts it was filed away. 

John turned and the look on his face was not open, nor friendly. It was a blank face that Bro couldn’t track an expression on. Just as well — that sort of thing wasn’t his strong suit.

“Why are you so afraid of feeling anything? You’re like an empty piñata — all of the party got beat out and there’s some awkward looking cardboard on the ground.” 

Damn. Apparently he was gonna come for him like that — knowing nothing about him but arrow-straight to the heart. Part of him leaned into the tension of it - the possibility of a fight. Why did John know him like that? Those were things that he never let cross his lips, much less information freely discussed with others. 

“I think it’s a little too early to make assumptions about what’s inside of me. You haven’t even visited to see yet.” Bro kept his tone flat, flirting without giving it away. Things that frightened him also fascinated him - John could take him apart. Those little flashes of anger said that he could and that he might. It was something Jake could never have done. 

John leaned to one side, almost like he was lounging on a couch mid-air. Resting his cheek on his palm he posed his next question. “Why are you in my room?” 

_Say what you mean to say. Don’t deflect._

“I want to get to know you.” 

“What will you do if I don’t want to get to know you?” 

Bro spared a moment to comedic timing and then shrugged, laying his hands out to either side in capitulation. “I guess I’ll just die then.” 

The laugh that forced its way out of John seemed to do so mostly through his nose. It started its progress as a huff and then the rest of it escaped as John’s mouth formed a brilliant smile. Without waiting to see what would happen next Bro stepped forward, hooking his fingers into John’s belt-loops and towing him through the hall. The sound of wind filled his ears. His glasses fogged up slightly. Making a quick trip to his own apartment he set John to hover above his couch. 

John watched him, mirroring his flat affect in a way that looked highly unnatural, given his gregarious affect in other situations. “And what are we doing now?” 

“Was thinking that we would watch something. Potentially more interesting than hovering like a very localized fog in your own bedroom?” 

“Maybe I don’t feel like watching movies.” John adjusted into a sitting position before dropping down to land on the couch.

 

“Judging by the amount of movie posters already on your wall and the ones in the plastic tube? I would feel confident saying that John my Neighbor is a Major Cinephile.” 

John struggled with another grin, trying to keep it off of his face. “You did not just quote The Lonely Island at me.” 

Bro smirked back at him, the corner of his mouth turning up just slightly. 

The next thing in his ‘background noise’ queue was Interstellar. This checked two boxes: one, it had Matthew McConaughey and two, it had hilarious astrophysics. McConaughey had made a strong showing in some of the posters, this was a safe bet for viewing. John adjusted down into more of a sprawl, tucked up against the arm of the couch for maximum comfort while viewing. 

“Popcorn?” 

Bro rose, rustling through the drawers before finding an un-popped bag of microwavable popcorn. John had trailed him to the kitchen and made a soft noise of disappointment in his throat. 

“Look man, beggars can’t be choosers.” Squinting a little bit at the bag, he shook his head. Shit was expired by three years. “I don’t actually think we should eat this.” 

John waved a hand as if to banish the whole line of conversation. “I have fresh kernels at my place. Do you have a pot that we can pop them in? It tastes a lot better when you have real butter on it and you popped it yourself…” 

His silence following the whole idea apparently let John intuit the truth of his apartment-goblin life; not that John had room to judge him. Cooking was not high on his list of priorities. Nutrition was nutrition - it was just as easy to get pre-packaged protein sets, smoothie mixes that were precut. Throw some kale in that shit and call it food. John stepped out of the entryway to the kitchen. Bro tracked the sound of his footsteps out of the apartment and heard the door to John’s apartment bang open. There was a squeaky hinge on it and it was another cue he used to make sure he knew where John was. Boxes ruffled and there was the sound of objects being moved. 

Around the time that Bro had resigned himself to watching a movie about time and space on his own, John reappeared, hauling a black pressure-cooker and a container of fresh kernels tucked under an arm. Setting the cooker down onto the range of Bro’s stove, he retrieved a salt-shaker, pad of butter, and a saucepan small enough to fit into the bigger pot. Daring Bro to say anything with a raised eyebrow, John went about looking through Bro’s cupboards. Shaking his head at some of the stranger things that Bro had put up there, John found the old bottle of vegetable oil that had been abandoned. 

The smell of heat and metal started to fill the kitchen. Bro cooked so seldomly that it was novel to lean against the opposite counter and watch John’s hands go through a dance that they were obviously practiced at. Oil had been poured into the cooker before anything else was added, and the kernels laid in shortly thereafter. John affixed the lid to the top and went about melting the butter, gently nudging the pad along the saucepan and occasionally twirling it to make sure that there was an even distribution of butter. The first pops sounded from inside of the cooker. 

“And all of this effort is better than three minutes because…” 

“Because it tastes much more delicious, you cretin.” John answered promptly, tone glib rather than cutting. “Go sit down on the couch. Are any of your dishes usable or do they have weird shit stored in them too?” 

Bro rolled his eyes and divested a large plastic Tupperware bowl of fabric swatches. Running it under the tap, he made sure that no dust clung to the surface. Dropping it next to John’s free side he made his way back to the couch. 

Not long after a mouth-watering scent reached him. John eased himself on to the part of the couch that he had claimed previously, putting a brimming bowl of popcorn between them. Some of the topmost kernels glistened with melted butter and had a dusting of salt decorating them. Bro crunched in stunned silence. 

There was a pointed difference between the shit in the bag and the warm, crunchy delight that John had spun up. Looking to the left he found his guest grinning at him. 

“Next time we’ll try it with cheddar. Or maybe we can do caramel.” 

“Pass on the caramel.” 

“Fine. I’m not huge on sweets either. Can totally do savory though. Start the movie.” 

Bro hit the remote and the player and watched as a thin shower of dust kicked out the opening of the film. 

* 

Upon arrival home from the gym on Friday something was wrong. Someone was in his space and they had moved things. Pulling his gloves with the reinforced knuckles out of his back pocket and sliding them on, Bro flash-stepped through the space trying to figure out the source of the disturbance. 

Turnabout was fair play. A grouping of grocery bags in various stages of being unloaded were sitting on his kitchen counter. All of the katanas that had been jammed in the freezer had been relocated to another corner of the room, leaned up against the wall and out of the way. The dishwasher chugged along faithfully, active for the first time in months.

The smell of pepper and garlic floated through the air and John stood with his back to him as he went about cooking. The tone in his voice as he heard Bro settle into the entryway of the kitchen was playful. “Having swords in your fridge is weird dude. I would think if nothing else that’s not super great for the metal? If you had to get one out and fight if it’s not the right kind of alloy the things might shatter. I mean they’re pretty shitty to start with.” 

Dragging a chair from the table Bro brought it to the edge of the kitchen space and planted himself in it backward so that he could lean his forearms against the back of it. “If you have to ask you wouldn’t understand the reason behind it.”

Silence settled between them, not quite comfortable but also not one that John felt compelled to break. Normally Bro would let that stretch off to infinity; but, there was something that John had said that had stuck with him. 

“How do you know Dave?” He put the question out there like a jab, seeing if John would evade or engage. Given that John turned to look at him with a paring knife in hand and kind of a blank expression, perhaps that was not the best call. 

“How could I not?” 

That answered the question that prompted the first, but did not actually give him the information that he had been seeking. John caught his eyes, his own seeming electrically blue and almost backlit in the way that some of the basement neighbors’ eyes got.

“While we’re talking about random things that we may or may not know, do you remember shattering into a million tiny pieces?” 

Sometimes it seemed like John wanted to take him out. Just fucking take a shirt off and fight him in the middle of the apartment. Other times he laughed at fart jokes. It was hard to get a read on him. That all taken into account Bro felt his throat tighten at the question. How it was that John knew the content of his nightmares was not something that he wanted to figure out. 

Dinner is set out on the counter and the two of them ate without talking further about his brother or the fact that John knew things that he should not have been privy to. 

* 

Cleaning up John’s apartment turned into a fight. Sort of. Normally Bro could give a fuck about other people’s space but John was different. John’s happiness and general sense of wellbeing were now the subject of his direct and undivided attention. If John could arbitrarily decide that he would stock Bro’s kitchen full of food, then Bro felt perfectly comfortable making John’s apartment less of a shithole. 

His only problem was that the owner of the apartment had floated up to the corner of the ceiling like the world’s most irritating balloon and would not get his ass down to help.

 

“If you don’t get down here I’m going to do whatever I want with your stuff. And I’ll let Liv Tyler out of her room and she’s going to shit all over the floor.” 

John gave him an evil look. “If you weren’t being such a bossy fucking jerk and telling me what to do with my own space we wouldn’t be having this problem at all. I knew I was right when I told Dave that you were a controlling piece of shit.” 

Bro’s jaw tightened, but he let the comment pass. The subject of Dave was verboten, hidden safe away in a box, encased in concrete and thrown in the bottom of the river. Instead he walked over to where John was and _jumped._

All of his training for his glutes at the gym paid off. He could jump pretty high just for training, catching John’s legs was easy. Getting him all the way down the wall apparently was not going to be. John stopped halfway down the way and even as Bro strained to haul him the rest of the way down he stayed in place. The pressure in the room made Bro’s ears strain, like the air had shifted. 

John smirked down at him, playfully looping his legs over Bro’s shoulders. 

This would take alternate strategy. 

Leaning John back against the wall, Bro looked up at him from between his thighs. “You should come down.” 

Floating and looking more than haughty, John met his gaze. “ You should maybe find something better to do with your mouth. You’re real close to my junk-” 

Bro did not give him a chance to finish the sentence. Mouthing along the seam of John’s fly, he pressed a kiss to the soft mound of his dick trapped under layers of fabric. Curling a hand over John’s thigh to balance him, he popped the button on his jeans, pushing the zipper down far enough that he could catch it with his teeth. The metal tang was unpleasant but easy to bear until he got it all the way down. 

Above him, head against the wall, John sighed. Bro could see the long column of his throat, and could feel his toes curling against the fabric of his shirt. His heels pressed in subtly, the muscles in his legs guiding him forward. 

Mapping the shape of John’s dick through the fabric of his boxers was a full body experience. It had been a while since he’d last had someone in his hands. Jake was a hazy, warm memory tucked years behind him. Breathing out and feeling the heat of his mouth gathering in the fabric just in front of his lips Bro glanced up at John past his shades. 

“Your call cowboy. You wanna tap out, you tell me now.” 

Instead of answering verbally John knotted his hands tight into Bro’s hair. 

Bro smirked reaching up to adjust the opening on John’s briefs, freeing his cock from the cloth. It was starting to show some signs of life. Nuzzling along one of the veins outlined along the underside, Bro wet his lips with his tongue. It was a good dick, wide enough to work his jaw. The thought of the weight of it threatening the back of his throat made him groan a little. 

John’s one hand stayed flat against the wall to brace, the other kept firm on the back of his head. “Gay.” His intonation was soft and teasing. Bro arched an eyebrow high enough to clear his shades and stretched a finger over to flick John’s cockhead. Bro felt the resulting jolt against his shoulders. 

“Ow! Fuckhead, why was that necessary?” 

Kissing the injured spot, Bro dragged his tongue up to circle the tip of John. “Think really hard about it and I bet that the answer will come to you.” 

There was no further commentary from John. To Bro’s slight dismay the hand curled tight in his hair eased off and traveled over to bunch up in John’s shirt, showing off the plush expanse of his stomach. Bro wanted to knead his fingers into the give of it, feel the weight of him pinning him down to the bed or safely curled up under him. Leaving John’s cock just for a second he turned to kiss the inside of his thigh, hiding his pleasure at the impatient whine that John let out when he did so. 

“You’re gonna get mad if I dickslap you. You’re already down there. Could we get this show on the road?” John curled his toes nervously, Bro could hear the movement behind him. Stretching hands up so that he could cup John’s ass, he smirked. “What’cha gonna do if I say no?” 

A moment passed before he spread his hands out in resigned acceptance. “I guess I’ll just die.” 

Bro took a deep breath and slid John as far back into his mouth as he would fit. It was a discipline thing. He relaxed his throat, swallowing down and breathing out slowly through his nose. There was a rhythm to these things. The taste of skin and warmth filled up his mouth and saliva welled up along his tongue. 

“Oh fuck.” The breathy sound of John’s voice was so soft Bro wasn’t sure that he had heard it. 

Sliding John back out slowly he did his best to watch John’s expression. His glasses sat slightly askew and he was staring down at Bro as if he were a second messianic coming. His bottom lip had swollen from where his impressive buck teeth pressed down on it. That look right there was glory. 

It was control.

Throwing himself forward, Bro let the spit in his mouth and his own momentum propel him into the rhythm that he needed. John breathed out harshly, not the same keening sound that had come out of him earlier. His hands alternated between lighting on Bro’s cheeks, resting in his hair or sliding up his own shirt to pinch and twist at his nipples. Bro filed everything away for later review and study. His own cock railed against the injustice of it — safely ensconced in his jeans. 

John started to work with him, rocking into his mouth from the wall, hands planted flat against it. Bro could feel the thunder of his pulse under the hardness sliding easily through his mouth. His own breath added to the soundtrack, pants interspersed around the set slurps and stuttering breaths above him. 

The stubborn ass stayed on the wall, but was starting to slide a little bit. His heels dug painfully into Bro’s shoulders and he threw his head back in silent contemplation of the ceiling or heaven or whatever he thought about when a guy was going down on him like he was auditioning for a porn. The little stutters in John’s hips told him that he was getting close and silently he wondered if he would get a warning before John let it go. 

Part of him wanted the surprise.

“Gonna… I’m … I’m gonna.”

A warning then. Nice. Bro doubled down, bobbing close enough that his nose flirted with John’s pubic bone. His sideburns brushed along the soft skin of John’s thighs. All of his senses were full of John — the smell of his skin, all of his attention overwhelmed by the warmth of the body beneath him. The whole of his focus centered down to pants punctuating the air and the movements of John’s body rolling against his face. He swallowed and John shivered beneath him. Hands locked firmly into his hair and held him in place. It lasted long enough that Bro reached up and smacked his hip lightly. 

Released, Bro cleared his throat and took a few deep breaths. Deliberately, he slid his shades up to rest on his hair. It had been handled so much it was a lost cause at this point. Making eye contact that was intended to be slightly uncomfortable, he made a pointed gesture down at his dick. 

John hung there, half out of his briefs and looking debauched. A wicked grin spread across his mouth. “I’ll come down if you take care of yourself. I want a show.” 

He slid up onto the ceiling, spread out in a way that… was not sexy. Never one to back down from a challenge though, Bro walked himself backward, thumbing the button on his jeans open. Letting himself fall backward onto the couch, one of his legs remained hooked over the arm and the other one he braced against it. Wiggling his pants down he met John’s eyes. 

“Don’t stop watching me.” 

What was it about the John’s eyes? That was an easy command to follow. They were so blue, the kind of color that did not show up on human faces very often. It was like making aggressive eye contact with the sky. John could wrap him up in the cage of his regard and it would be fine. 

Sliding a hand along his abs he took his time getting to himself. Vaguely he wished that he had some of the lube that hung out in his bedroom drawer, but there was enough precome there to work with. Pushing against the surface of his palm he groaned. All of his desires had to do with being overwhelmed, with control or losing it. Touching himself on command was easy. Part of him wondered if John wanted him to take his time, or if he wanted it fast. It would be a little bit of a stretch to hold onto the masculine energies but he could be strong. 

In the absence of data regarding the content of the show he was supposed to be putting on he started to pump himself in earnest - long brutal strokes the way he did in private. John stayed where he was, a living Polaris for Bro to focus on. He floated directly above him, having straightened his clothes out and gotten his glasses on straight. With the anticipation from earlier it was quick work to finish himself off. He was careful not to get a mess on John’s couch but the force of release was a little more strong than normal. It was a thrill having to perform. 

Instead of remaining on the ceiling like the world’s most non-functional ceiling fan John descended to him. He sat on the back of the couch, a foot perched against Bro’s hip as if he had conquered a sovereign land. Bro took that opportunity to wipe the mess on his hands off on John’s pant-leg. The two of them watched at each other at a long moment before John shook his head. 

“Get out of my apartment.” 

Bro stayed where he was, sprawled out with his arms over his head. “We going to finish unpacking you tomorrow?” 

“Yes. Get the hell out of here. I have somewhere to be in a half hour and I was stalling for time. You helped with that fantastically, but now I have to go and get a shower and change.” 

Tucking himself in and making a brief stop in the kitchen to wash his hands, Bro let himself out. 

* 

Maybe the horror came from the inevitability of it all. Bro never knew for sure what it is about his night terrors that make them that much more paralyzing than normal stress dreams. Lack of control in his personal sphere was infuriating and frustrating beyond measure. 

The dream began as it always did, in front of a mirror. His sixteen-year old self watched back at him, fresh out of a screaming fight with Dave with eyes wide with shock and temper. He punched the wall and his brother walked out of the house. First time the kid ever stood up to him. Pride and terror warred around inside of him like two stray dogs having a death-match over scraps. 

The cracks started along the hemisphere of his throat, forming a necklace of darkness below his adam’s apple. Small fissures spread up the planes of his jaw and danced down his arms to trace down to his fingers. They multiplied out in tributaries, cracks blossoming up along the line of his arm as if he were a flute of champagne that had been dropped on the ground. Bits and chunks of him fell away, bloodless and tinkling as dark started to overtake his vision. 

Dark closed in and Bro lay frozen in his room. His sheets clung to his sweat-slick back and his heart thundered against his ribs as if it could mount a concentrated campaign and escape his body through sheer enthusiasm. 

All there was for it is gun-cleaning. Keeping his side-arm and rifle from the service that conveniently left with him was something that was mindless but also immersive enough to keep discomfort at bay. Peeling his shirt off he got into the gun locker and picked up his various firearms to lay out on the table. Oil, solvents, and cloths followed in rote order. Each weapon was disassembled carefully, all of their guts laid out in sequence. There was a symmetry to it that he could not bring to his unconscious mind. The guns could be taken apart and put back together. 

Somewhere between putting the M9 together and reaching out for the Sig that he kept as a backup handgun, the barrel of the M6 touched the back of his head. 

Standing so that the cold pressure trailed along his spine, he pivoted to find John standing with the gun pressed directly to his chest. He watched John blankly, letting all of the tension drain out of him. 

The look on his neighbor’s face was hard to understand. 

“You know I should kill you.” 

Bro kept quiet, trying to ferret out the source of the aggression and the odd body language of the person across from him. “If you’re going to do it, fucking shoot. Otherwise put my fucking gun down.” 

John had steady hands. That was something that Bro could appreciate about a man. Slowly the barrel came to point down at the floor. Sliding his finger off of the trigger John offered over the gun via the tactical-strap, dangling it between his fingertips like a dead rat. The rifle swung to and fro and Bro caught the stock, lowering it to the table. 

“I should beat your ass for a stunt like that.” 

John was unperturbed by the threat. “Ready to back up that talk? Gonna take me up to the roof?” He bit the question out. “Gonna beat me up? You’re a big guy -- it’s obviously something that you work on. Your fucking bicep is bigger than my leg. You’re gonna have a bit more trouble with me than with your brother. I’m not a fucking kid.” 

Bro shook his head. Shame burned bright at the accusation and there was nothing to say to dampen it. What had happened with Dave had happened. It was done. Some of it he stood by -- the world was hard and nightmarish. Everything that he had done for his brother was to prepare him, to toughen him up. 

“There is something going on between me and you that I’m not picking up on and I’m fucking tired of dancing around it. So you and I are gonna level right here and now.” 

John stalked through the kitchen - now very much his over the last week. Nothing was in the same place that it had been before John appeared. It was a space that served as a brackish zone, between what Bro was and what John brought with him. 

“You are a violent psycho with a puppet fetish and I know for a fact that you play a very long game most of the time. You love games.” John stood resting with his hip against the counter. The muscles on his arms stood out with the tension that John carried, and not for the first time Bro wondered where that came from. 

Summoned by John’s accusations, thoughts of Cal rose in his mind. The puppet lay safely entombed in his box in the back of the closet. He thought of all of the time that he and Pilar had spent talking about attachment. What kinds of attachments were healthy. Games - fuck John if he wasn’t right - Bro loved games. Playing them, winning them. Manipulating the outcomes. He forced his hands to be still, stretching them out on the tabletop. The smell of solvent permeated the air - chemical and tangy and adding to the oddity of the moment. Usually the air around John was clear. 

“You know things about me that you shouldn’t know. How?” Bro phrased the question in the most neutral tone that he could find. 

Maybe it was his imagination, but the hair around John’s head was a little extra frizzy that evening, standing up in a corona as if caught in static electricity.

“Because I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I’ve popped in and out of places and I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen you and Dave on the roof. I’ve seen that fucking puppet. I saw where you landed. I’ve watched you both and thought about interfering because Dave is my best friend. It just causes a corpse pile-up.” Mumbling furiously to himself, John knotted his fingers together. 

“I... there’s too many of me. Too many alts. We’ve gone, we’ve seen things. There’s so many different iterations where I could retcon your life if I wanted. If you tried to be better. If you were more like Dirk. I came here because I was tired of being where I was. There’s always another me that stays there -- that’s the way that time works. It’s loops right? Sometimes I step out of the circles. I followed you here and took over the me that belongs in this place.” 

John stopped abruptly as Bro rested his hands on either of his cheeks. Up close he couldn’t smell alcohol and John’s eyes weren’t any stranger than normal. 

“You sound like the troll that chills out on the corner. The one that is touched in the head and has extra pupils. I don’t listen to them either.” Bro spoke quietly, trying to diffuse the nervous energy of the stranger standing in his kitchen. At this point any assumptions that he had about his neighbor were out the window. 

“I’mma tell you a few things in regard to what it is that you think you know.” 

It was hard, to dredge these words out of himself, to put them in the air. Pilar and he had worked on it for a long time. If one wanted to be accepted- to be loved, then one had to be subject to the terror of being seen. 

“My mom walked out on us - on me when I was thirteen. I found Dave that same year, in her car alone. She didn’t come back for either of ‘em so I kept ‘em both. I got old enough to work and I looked out for us. Dave decided he needed to bounce at thirteen. You seen all that too?” 

Bro tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “Apparently you know my whole life, so those are some kinda critical things to skip over. Else I reckon that you weren’t looking as close as you say.” 

Goddamnit he hated to sound like the good ol’ boys that cruised town in the work trucks that did not have a speck of dirt on them. A lot of summers had been spent out working on farms and in fields. It meant getting on sweaty, crowded buses and working punishing hours for people that were shit. If they were the type to hire a minor with no guardian and no paperwork, they were the type to treat their workers like garbage. The military had been a step up from all of that shit. 

A second set of hands wrapped around his shoulders and lips brushed his earlobe. He was looking at John, but John was speaking to him from directly behind him. 

“I hadn’t seen it yet,” the doppelganger said. “But I did. And you’re right, this timeline’s a little different. It’s really really far for a splinter to travel. We are gods though -- so I guess that means omnipresent. The game didn’t come with a manual.” 

The first John locked eyes with the second, making a decision. He stepped back from Bro and out of the room. Bro heard the door close. Turning to face the new iteration of the same person he stepped backward to give a little space for the conversation that needed to happen. 

“You wanna tell me what the fuck?” He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb indicating the path that the extra John had taken. 

The new iteration hopped up on the kitchen counter and took a granny smith apple out of the fruit basket (now containing actual fruit instead of throwing stars). The fruit crunched audibly as John bit into it.

 

“Not so much. But also not feeling like fighting you anymore. So. Apple instead. Apples aren’t something that cause arguments. Want a bite?” He offered the un-touched side over to Bro. 

Bro scrubbed his face and turned back to the guns. If nothing else he would have to finish getting them assembled and locked up again before he could deal with any further idiocy. That task went quickly, his fingers knew the work. With the arms safely locked up in the gun safe, he came back out to the counter. John was sitting on it, swinging his feet aimlessly and staring down between his hands. A tiny supercell mutated and shifted in the cage of his fingers, sparkling with microscopic flashes of lighting. At Bro’s return the entire system collapsed into itself and disappeared.

Bro leaned against the refrigerator, the chill of the metal seeping through the fabric of his shirt to lay into his skin. Silence was a powerful motivator for some people. Dave had hated it -- Jake wasn’t overly fond either. 

“I’m a god. And you are divine. Pretty simple right?” 

Bro shook his head sharply. “Wrong. I can get behind psychics -- I know the trolls that live downstairs. Fucking Martex took the power and wifi out for the entire building when they had a migraine. I understand that once in a while you get a human that’s touched in some way. Some of the carapacians are interesting like that too.” Bro forced himself to remain still, to keep his tone even and schooled. “The shit you were pulling just now isn’t that.” 

John shrugged, watching him out of the corner of his eye. “Is it that hard to believe that your gods walk among you?”

Bro was beginning to feel a little bit like a bobble-head ornament with the rate that his head was swinging back and forth in negation of everything being thrown at him. Usually he was cool under pressure, he was unflappable. _That was the thing that destroyed all of his relationships._

“Yes. Because that’s bullshit and the two of us know it. If there was a canon of gods literally walking with you like some Touched by an Angel bullshit then there would be references in popular media. There would be shrines. There would be established points of contact where we could avail ourselves of the holy spirit and your dubiously tender mercies.” 

John’s eyes lit up with mischief, and he leaned forward balancing on his palms as he eased forward toward Bro from the counter. 

“If I said: ‘ATTENTION WORTHLESS HUMAN. THIS IS YOUR GOD SPEAKING. IT IS A WRATHFUL GOD WHO DESPISES YOU MORE THAN YOU COULD HAVE POSSIBLY DARED TO FEAR. I HAVE WATCHED YOUR ENTIRE PATHETIC LIFE UNFOLD. I HAVE OBSERVED YOU WHILE YOU WOULD QUAKE AND TREMBLE IN PERSONAL PRAYERS OF SHAME. WHILE YOU PLEADED FORGIVENESS FOR BEING SUCH A WRETCHED DISGUSTING FAILURE ON EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL.’ Would that sound appropriately divine?’”

Bro could _taste_ the capsmash in the meandering monologue. Staring flat back at John he shook his head. “I would believe that you have a troll friend who’s got a really underserved wiggly for someone and is angling pretty hard at the recipient of that speech in the black quad if they’re quadsexual.” 

John folded in on himself as if the delight at Bro’s response were too good to observe all in one go. Scrubbing his hands through his hair and peeking up at Bro he dissolved back into amused chuckles. Between muffled snorts Bro caught him saying “Yeah... you’re not wrong. He’s not quadsexual though...” 

Bro was not going to let this conversational train get derailed. They were gonna get to the station of answers if he had to get out back and push the damn thing by the caboose. 

“That amazing rant aside... I’m just going to go with you for a sec. So you’re a god. Why are you in these shitty-ass apartments playing gay chicken with me?” 

The laughter that had been bubbling in his neighbor’s eyes drained away. His shoulders rose and fell in a quick and articulate shrug. “Why not? ‘S not like I have better things to be doing.” He tapped his fingers along the tile, finding the shape of a chord even in the absence of keys to play. 

“So you are essentially telling me that you are doing this for the lulz. Because nothing else in the entirety of creation is more entertaining than being right here at this moment. I find that to be a stretch.” 

“That sentence came out of the mouth of a man who in more than one reality has a miniature pony named Maplehoof and who regularly visits websites involving horse-tack put on people.” John tapped a nail against the counter in sharp rhythm. “You don’t get to tell me what is weird and what isn’t. Your weird-meter is broken.” 

“Just means that I need someone to break me in. Maybe I need a firm hand on the reins.” Bro smirked. “Think you can take me in hand? Make me behave?” 

“You are the wild stallion. It is you.” John drawled, rolling his eyes. 

Off topic - they had veered that way again though this instance had been his fault. “So presumably you have eternity in front of you and this is where the party is at. I can’t fault you in your choice of company.” 

He really, _really,_ could fault him. In fact he did fault him. Bro had no idea what the guy was thinking. 

“Are you omniscient as well as omnipresent?” 

John shook his head. “Mmm-mm. Omnipresent, but not omniscient. I don’t know the same things that the alt that just walked out of here does. Alpha is closer to omniscient but I am not him and we are not in the alpha timeline. The extra that just walked out of here and I were experiencing different things at different times. We’ll have to have a chat and decide who continues forward in this timeline.” 

Bro blinked slowly. “So you’re a bit more like some of the polytheistic gods than a monotheistic central figure.” 

“Little ‘g’.” John spun another cloud into existence in his palm, the movement of it reflected against his glasses. 

“What’s your dominion?” 

“Your ass.” John did not make the eye contact that a bold assertion like that required. His attention remained fixed doward at the tiny storm in his grasp. Rain gently pooled in John’s palm to disappear again before it spilled off of the edge of his hand. 

Bro crossed the space, standing between John’s knees and getting into his face. Placing arms to either side of John’s hips, he leaned close. 

“You know about my nightmares. Since we’re in crazytown population you and me, tell me why it is that I keep falling to pieces. Metaphorically speaking.” There had only been the one time that he woke up with a red line around his throat. Ideally that was not going to become a repeat scenario. 

John’s cheeks held a hint of a flush, the warmth of it trailing along the line of his throat and up into his ears. Instead of answering Bro’s question, he leaned forward to kiss him. 

It was an indulgence that Bro allowed himself. He opened his mouth and let John inside of him, feeling quiet settle through him to be chased shortly by the heat and excitement of having someone close. The liquid heat of John’s mouth and the press of his teeth as he bit Bro’s lip was enough to focus his mind just on them. For a few seconds before he had to return to the big picture his mind slowed down to focus just on the details: the soft little hum that John made as he took a breath between kisses, pressure from John’s tongue lightly tracing his bottom lip. They pressed into one another like magnets, the draw of John’s body as inevitable as a tidal shift. 

John wrapped himself around Bro, leaning forward on the counter, curling his arms around his shoulders and wrapping his legs tight against his sides. Water trickled down the back of his neck and there was a lingering chill in John’s fingers from the storm. Bro won back a tiny bit of distance between their mouths, shades lightly clacking with John’s glasses. 

“Why is it that you’re so thirsty for me? No one ever kiss you before?” 

White blossomed across his vision and for a second all he felt was pure rage. The world became painfully bright on one side of his face. Awareness of what had caused the change slowly filtered in - his shades had twisted violently on one side, the temple jutting up and into his hair. His fingers curled into fists and he was halfway to bringing a hand up to hit the source of the threat before he caught himself. 

John had head-butted him. He made some distance between them. Enough that he could focus on pulling a breath in through his nose. He planted his feet firmly on the tile of the kitchen and let the adrenaline and anger from the strike pass through him. Anger was like heat -- given enough time it rose and dissipated into the sky. 

All of his movements were closely observed; John stared him down like a feral thing that had decided to come and perch on his counter. Bro’s glasses hadn’t been the only casualty to sarcasm. The pair on John’s face dangled at an awkward angle. Judging by how thick the damn things were he probably couldn’t see jack shit. Forcing his fingers to uncurl he reached out and righted them. John allowed him near his face, even when Bro would not have granted the same liberty. 

“You should take me to bed. And maybe not talk shit about the fact that I like to be touched. Like a normal, functional human. Which you are not.” 

“You are... giving me an error-report’s worth of mixed signals dude.” The mood was pitching more wildly than a show-bull at a rodeo. Any minute clowns wearing cowboy hats would show up to lead one of them away. 

“Do you not want to? You sure front a lot about sex all the time. I figured you would be into it.” 

Bro chewed along the inside of his lip - a nervous habit he’d kept from being deployed. There was actual moisture in the air so his lips weren’t constantly chapped; but the impulse remained. “My boner and I are confused right now. Situation unclear.” 

Stretching a foot out, John gave his junk an exploratory caress, the pressure of his toes causing a sizzle of pleasure to arc up his back. 

“It’s not that confused. Maybe a little nervous. You’re a shower though.” John worked the ball of his foot in a slow circle. Bro was fixated on the indent of John’s teeth where they had snagged his bottom lip. Those might sink into the meat of his earlobe or his shoulder. What would the pressure feel like? 

The sheets needed a change after the nightmares and he did not feel comfortable with John in his private space. The front of the apartment and surrounding territory had morphed into common ground at some point. He’d never been the sort to cede space before. Dave had his part of the apartment. Bro’s room had been his citadel - no entry allowed. The borders were strictly defined. 

Flicking the screen on his phone on, Bro pulled up his app that let him wirelessly control his sound system controls and threw on a little trap. While rare, he’d had noise complaints when company was over. Either dick was just that good or he tended to hook up with screamers. All of his neighbors knew that he worked at the club on the weekend. They didn’t need to know what a dark master of fuck-magic he really was. 

John pushed him forward and followed the trajectory of his fall to the couch, landing himself in Bro’s lap. The bass pulsed in the background. “We’re awake, neither of us is sleeping. So we could get laid. Classic scenario, right there. We even have tension because we had a fight. Fights.” John trailed off, thoughtful. 

“Your idea and my idea of what a good time looks like diverge sharply.” 

John pulled his shirt over his head slowly. “I don’t know how to tie you up like some sort of extreme christmas present and I’m not letting you put a bit in my mouth. I still think we could find trouble to get into.” 

Putting his hands on Bro’s chest and kneeling above him, John unzipped himself and wiggled out of his pants. They landed in a heap on the other side of the couch. Egbert straightened up, kneeling in briefs and socks. Of course the shithead would fuck with socks on. If fucking was what was on the menu. Bro slid a hand up, smoothing his thumb over one of those pert nipples. Rubbing in a slow circle, he watched John’s lashes flutter closed behind his glasses. 

“Harder.” John whispered the word and Bro felt it in his hips. Getting a hold on the skin he twisted slowly, rubbing the delicate skin between his fingertips. John dropped his head back with a groan, exposing the line of his throat. A small star of moisture darked the fabric of his briefs where his dick strained valiantly against the fabric. Bro stretched a hand out giving it a caress. Folding his fingers around John’s head he luxuriated in the feeling of heat seeping through the fabric between them. That first time getting John in his mouth hadn’t been enough. There was more that could be done. More territory to explore. 

The angle he had gave a great view: the soft planes of John’s stomach, the dusting of hair over his chest and the trail leading him back down. He was a good looking guy -- probably would grow into his shoulders. Or would he? Something about the concept snagged in Bro’s mind. Before he could really let it bother him he let it go, easing into the flow of the moment that the two of them had going on. As it was John was a grade A first-year college twink. Little fresher than Bro usually liked, given his preference for old bulls and bears. 

Digging under the couch he snagged the edge of the condoms that had fallen down that way and escaped halfway under the couch. The crinkle of the packaging brought John’s attention. “Is it the butt-stuff event horizon? We doing this?”

Bro smirked. “We’re making this happen.” 

John had a moment of looking his age. Uncertainty flitted over his face. “Who’s getting pounded?” 

“One soldier, reporting for duty.” Bro rolled his hips up, brushing the wood he was rocking against the plush weight of John’s ass. “Condition of that being that you thoroughly fucking destroy me. Apparently you are the god of all things anal.” He tilted his head at an angle, tone mocking. “Unless you are the sort of god that lies. Makes promises and doesn’t fulfil them.” 

John paused, trying to figure out the trick. “You’re not gonna be weird about this? Or hogtie me? There’s not going to be puppets involved? You just want me to go to town on you?” 

“Yup.” Bro was dismissive, throwing his arms over the edge of the couch. The condoms remained in a folded pile on his stomach between them. Likelihood of the fuckening occurring was lessening the longer this conversation went on but that wasn’t necessarily an issue. In the space of less than thirty minutes John had gone from ready to end him over perceived or real slights to DTF. Probably not the best time to push for fourth base. He pulled his knees up and John sagged backward against them. 

They watched each other for a long moment. John scratched the back of his head. 

“I’m not really feeling this. I came in here with a plan and now I’m chilling on your lap in my underwear and socks and you’re fully dressed. I’ve lost control of my life.”

 

Bro smoothed a hand along John’s ankle, eventually holding onto his calf. It was a comfortable place for his hand to come to rest. “My therapist says it’s a sign of strength to be able to just say clearly ‘this isn’t working’ - look at you asserting your boundaries.” Bro stretched out his free arm and flexed.

“You have...a therapist.” The sheer level of incredulity turned the statement into a question. 

“First three appointments were free and I was working at a club near her practice.” He shrugged, refusing to feel shame. 

“So...” 

“So I have some shit. All of us do.” Bro took his shades off and put them on the side table. The music transitioned into something closer to trance. He’d been working on a couple of styles from his initial compositions. Growth was important in life. “You ready to tell me what’s going on?” 

“You’re familiar. It’s something for me to do -- find all of Dirk’s splinters and bring them home! Otherwise it’s stupid to have retcon powers. If you can go through the fabric of reality you absolutely have a duty to do that. Possibly to comedic effect.” In time with the statement an arm stuck itself out of the ceiling and waved hello before disappearing. 

Pushing down the primal discomfort that the display caused him Bro asked the next obvious question. “Why help? We hooking up wherever it is that you’re from?” 

John adjusted in his lap, leaning against the back of the couch. “No. Like I said. It’s something for me to do.” 

“Seems like a fuckton of effort for someone that you aren’t connected to.” 

John’s smile tightened to the point of resembling a grimace. “Boredom is a powerful motivator. And look at us now. We’re connecting. We’re having fun.” He waved his hands around in superficial joy. “Woo.” 

“You keep dropping hints about what the situation with you is and they are all in Aramaic. You could try to actually say shit that I have a chance of following.” It was difficult to keep the displeasure from coloring his tone. If this was how Dave had felt when they lived together, he could understand on a microscopic level the forces that led to his brother disowning him. 

“There isn’t a way that I could tell you so that you would understand. You didn’t live through it.” 

That was the sound of someone who had fought. Bro heard another soldier and understood at least that much. “Well shit. Since we aren’t gonna bone and you’ve decided that I’m allowed to live, there’s nothing for it. We’re going to have to watch a movie.” 

Giving a long-suffering groan, John gave his agreement. “Guess there’s nothing for it.” 

*

The movie he suggested turns into a three film stretch. John put his pants back on and took his customary perch on the opposite end of the couch only to slowly expand over to flop halfway into Bro’s lap. Unsure of the protocol, Bro settled on slowly scratching his nails through John’s lusciously coarse hair. The algorithm on his sorting channel provided some troll flick having to do with mitochondrial destiny or some sort of other high flauten concept. Essentially the protagonist, having fulfilled the work set out in a prior lifetime now found herself at odds with the modern world that she inhabited. John watched with greater intensity than normal, the lights from the entertainment system dancing across his glasses. 

“Little close to home, innit?” 

“Shut up, you aren’t deep.” John said. 

“Just calling it like I see it.” 

John pulled the comforter that he had stolen from the back of the couch tighter around his shoulders. “You don’t see much being that you wear sunglasses inside like an asshole.” 

“Oooh sick burn. My heart.” Bro smacked his hand against his chest in a mockery of pain. “Can I get a cold compress? I think there might be blisters.” 

John waved a finger in a lazy circle. In response to the movement a cold front descended over the pair of them. Bro glanced down at John, unable to keep wryness from his tone. “If your mission was to make my nipples hard enough to cut diamonds, we’re gonna fucking call that shit accomplished. Send the boys and girls home, you have done it.” 

“Gross.” John smiled as he said it, before sliding his eyes up to Bro. “Maybe it’s revenge for earlier. Unlike you though, I’m not trying to cop a feel.” 

“Waste of my piercings, but whatever.” Bro watched the collection of trolls working their way through the denouement of the movie. 

“Bullshit.” John said. 

Pulling the fabric of his polo up in an intentionally slow motion, he exposed a nipple. It stood at attention in the cold, and the beads affixed to either side of the barbell running through it glittered. 

“Holy shit did that hurt?” John sat up on an elbow, looking at the piercing with interest. 

“No it felt great.” Bro arched a brow at him, lying extravagantly. 

“I think you’re a masochist and lying to my face.” John reached up, brushing his thumb along the raised skin, feeling out the textural difference between the softness of flesh and the skin-warmed hardness of the metal. It had been long enough that it didn’t feel like much, but the pressure was pleasant. 

“Rude.” Bro leaned back against the couch calmly. “While I am totally into you feeling up my hot bara tiddies, it’s colder than the arctic in here. Can you do something about that?” 

John yanked the hem of his shirt from Bro’s fingertips and down over his stomach. “Annnnd show and tell is done.” 

By the next movie, John had migrated most of the way into Bro’s lap. Whoever had had the sadistic idea to reimagine ‘Death of a Salesman’ as a black comedy, well Bro tipped his hat to their hand in it. The premise seemed like enough fun and it had been interesting to see the comedy of errors leading to the family’s collapse. As the titular main character entered the final part of the movie, having thoroughly fucked his life into tiny, unmendable pieces he noticed the look on John’s face. 

It was a rictus, something half frozen into an attempt at a neutral expression while his eyes shone. After searching his mind for a clue as to what was bugging his neighbor, his memory came to the figure in the picture on the desk. Corporate looking dude, who had kind of a similar style to the main character. Sliding a hand over to the remote Bro turned the movie off, choking the crescendoing score mid-rise. 

“I’m over it. Sorry dude, you can finish it later if you want.” Bro made a theatrical showing of yawning. “I’m done for tonight. If you’re feeling less homicidal you’re welcome to crash here with me, otherwise we can chill some other evening. Door’s that way.” 

John blinked a few times, very pointedly breathing away the tears that were threatening at the corners of his eyes. That probably had a story and Bro had no idea how to ask for it, nor did he really want it. 

“I’m staying over.” 

* 

John fit against his chest comfortably. His companion for the evening had arranged himself in a loose curl, facing the apartment wall with one of his larger plush jammed against his stomach in an aggressive cuddle. The line of his back was all warm skin and Bro pulled one of the extra throws out of storage so there was something extra to put over John. Most of the time he slept in sweats and with a sheet half thrown over himself. It was cool enough to offset the regional heat and uncomfortable enough that he could wake up fast if there was a need. 

It did not surprise him when John scooted back pressing into his hips. The soft cotton of his boxers rode high on his thighs. Bro reached out, stroking along his skin and feeling the drag of the dusting of hair that he found there. There had been times when he was wrong about this, he had learned to wait for a better signal than a shift. John provided it by reaching back to give his dick an exploratory squeeze through his sweats. 

“You’ve got stuff in here right? To do this?” 

This. Bro leaned against the line of John’s spine, wrapping an arm around his waist and playing his fingers along the line of his abdomen. The muscles underneath his fingers bunched. 

“This. Awfully vague there. Not sure I’m picking up what it is that you are putting down.” 

Heat flooded through John’s skin, and Bro could feel it radiate up through the places that they touched. “Don’t make me say it. You’re freaky. You get it.” John grumbled at him. 

“Nuh-uh.”

“I want to ... makelove-” the sentence petered out. “I want... to fuck you.” John’s voice was bright with forced confidence. 

Bro nosed against the nape of John’s neck, breathing in the smell of him. “And how do you want to do that?” 

John shivered. “However it feels best.” The timbre of his voice shifted throaty, and the tension in his body shifted to allow more give. Bro wanted to eat him alive.

“You really got no preference?” Too many questions -- but he had to know. He had to know that he wasn’t going to fuck this up the way that he always fucked things up. A beat passed. Two beats, then John’s reply came to him. 

“Fill me up and make me forget everything. We’ll try other stuff later. I just want to forget.” 

Good enough for him. He had a task and the body before him was a canvas. Wiggling out of his sleepwear he let the pile of clothes land on the floor. This would require skin. John’s shorts could wait for just a bit. Reaching to one side he dragged lube and a fresh set of condoms out of the drawer within easy reach. That accomplished there was John to see to. This dance had a sequence. 

Breathing along the line of his neck, Bro traced his tongue along the line of John’s earlobe. “Anything that you really don’t like?” 

John breathed out, mouth softening out into an ‘o’. “Mmm-mm.” Bro nibbled along the strong tendon of his neck, peppering his beautiful, sculpted shoulders with kisses. One hand stayed on John’s stomach, holding him in place. He wasn’t getting away. This was Bro’s show now. 

He took his time, finding skin to kiss, teasing out little sighs and hums as he investigated everything facing him. His dick was a slow throbbing ache, and pressed against the plush of John’s ass. Euphoria was slow-built though, and John was new territory. Patience would be required if he were going to carry out the task that had been assigned to him.

Snaking a hand into John’s boxers he palmed his dick, using the slickness John provided him to pump up and down the length of him in slow strokes. Every rise and fall of his hands he felt the undulation of John’s spine, the flex of his thighs. Leaving that for a moment he slid his hand around behind John, nudging his legs open by putting a knee between them. Brushing his thumb along his hole, he watched John’s reaction. 

There was a stiffness, just for a second and then John forcibly relaxed. Hard to suss out if that was excitement or fear. Gods on high he was a choice peach, Bro just wanted to take a bite of him. Sliding down he pulled John’s boxers down and free, throwing them to the side to join the pile of clothes on the floor. Quickly he brought his hands up to knead the glorious meat of his ass. John wiggled slightly, chuckling under his breath. 

Kissing slowly along his spine he looked up at him. “You got a latex allergy?” 

John answered with bleary confusion. “Uh... no?” His glasses had been relegated to the bedside table and his squinting face was adorable. Bro felt himself smiling like a wolf. 

“You ever been rimmed before, sugar?” This was a singular obsession at this point in time. He had to get in there. He absolutely had to up close and personal with that gorgeous ass. 

John paused a moment before turning red to his chest. “Uh... no.” 

“You interested?” Bro paused, letting him actually make the decision instead of forcing it. It would have been easy. Part of him wanted to. He had been on both parts of this equation, delirious and hidden away in his own head, with hands holding him down and pulling him closer to the edge. He’d also held someone down so firmly that he could have killed them. 

“Isn’t that... kinda... gross?” 

“Nah. Not if you prep first. Did you get yourself all squeaky clean for me?” There were options. There were prophylactics in the drawer -- he had dams, he had condoms, he even had finger condoms. Anything that would let him fuck without consequence was worth having and knowing how to use. 

John scrubbed his face with his hands, kind of muttering to himself. “I.... didn’t. I thought about it, but then I got mad and decided that you needed to die instead of taking time to learn how to ...get ready... for butt stuff.” 

Bro laughed under his breath. The slightly wavering state of John’s junk told him all that he needed to know about continuing the conversation. “We’ll keep it a little more basic.” 

Reaching up he squirted lube onto his palm, giving it a rub around in his palm before grasping John in hand and pumping him. The results were gratifying. John pushed his hips into his hand and eventually settled for throwing leg over Bro’s, giving him better access. They could do this, but John had said he wanted to fuck. They were going to fuck. 

He reached up and snagged a condom off of the pile and smoothed it onto himself, adding more lube to his hands. Reaching down he pressed a finger between the meat of John’s ass, seeking entrance. “Gonna feel sticky and weird for a second, but you didn’t ask for me to destroy your ass. Just... breathe.” 

John let him in. Maybe his wildcat had actually done more than his comments would suggest. As Bro sunk a finger slowly into him there was almost a meditativeness to John’s body. As instructed, he breathed. Moments passed, and Bro investigated good spots that he had found in his earlier exploration of John’s neck. The boner that had been flagging earlier was back in force after being neglected for prep, and John wiggled against him in anticipation. 

“C’mon. I want it.” 

He would give the man what he wanted. Pressing into John in a slow slide, he bit his lip at the pressure enveloping him. It was warm. Dude had a tight little ass. He felt John jolt as his piercings slid home and he smiled to himself. John threw an arm back, hanging on to what he could. 

Bro started to fuck him in earnest, small and shallow strokes. John’s fingers tightened against his skin. It felt so good inside of him. Bro readjusted his grip to John’s hip, holding him in place as he found a deeper rhythm. Glancing down he watched himself slide in and out of John, reveling in the wet sounds of their bodies, of John’s staccato breaths. 

John stopped him before he could start really chasing his orgasm -- he glanced along his shoulder, face flushed and lips slick. “I want to kiss you.” 

This required a position change that they navigated with relative ease. Bro hauled an extra pillow over and jammed it beneath John’s lower back making it that much easier to slide back into him. Framed in his knees, Bro leaned forward to give the man what he wanted. 

John was a force of whimpered out breaths and fierce kisses. Having more leverage from the position they had adopted he rolled up into Bro’s thrusts, nipping at his mouth and keeping it close. It was warm and heady and entirely too fucking intimate. This was supposed to be fun and now he was drowning. Between kisses he looked into John’s eyes - alight from within, too deep and too blue. It was like staring into eternity. Or maybe into the light of an oncoming train. 

“More.” John’s teeth bumped against his as he pressed against Bro’s mouth. 

“I want more.” The requests came panted out and Bro had no choice but to go harder. John had curled upward, body arching up to meet him and let him in. His hair was a scattered mess where the back of his head bit into the mattress. Bro could feel air moving around his room that had no right to be doing so, causing cold touches along his sweat-slicked shoulders. He could tell when he found the good spot inside of John because the quality of his voice changed. It was less words, and instead a degeneration of groans. Between them, precome slicked against his abs where John brushed against him. 

Nails bit into the back of his shoulders and it felt sweet. He could keep pushing, keep chasing it but all of his intentions were paling before the fact that he was about to bust a nut. Bro increased the pace to his thrusts, pounding into John. Where they bracketed him, John’s knees shivered. 

Sensing the end was nigh he took John’s dick in hand and stroked in time with his thrust. John’s hands fell into the sheets, knotting and twisting them in his fingers. Bro gave first, slamming his hips hard into John and shuddering with the force of it. It felt so good to let himself go inside. 

John stared up at him, glassy eyed and wanting. Even though it was too much, Bro shifted his hips even as he softened stroking John hard until he came with a silent twitch. He splashed himself over his abs and Bro’s fingers. Bro worked him relentlessly until John twitched and frowned at him with the force of aftershock and he could feel his dick soft in his hand. Finally released, John exhaled with a rush, proceeding to fall flat against the bed.Bro felt the warmth of his body retreating and silently mourned its loss. 

They sat there a moment, Bro kneeling between John’s legs and John sprawled out on his back. His arms were thrown over his head, fingers loosely curled against his palms. His eyes glittered like tiny moons come home to rest in a human body. Come glittered on his skin and Bro could see his heart beating subtly beneath his chest. He was beautiful. 

Wordlessly John got up and headed into the bathroom. The shower ran. Bro cleaned up the detritus of sex and got a new sheet out. John returned to him nude and got back into bed, sliding into the same position as he had been before. The plush that he had first snuggled was a lucky bastard as it was now up close and personal with John’s lovely dick. Bro had gotten dressed again and slid back into bed as well. Hooking his arm around John’s waist he pulled him close to spoon and closed his eyes. 

* 

John’s hands were on his throat. This was how it was going to end. The man above him was so cold and so strange that it was hard to reconcile him with the partner he had had a few hours ago - with the guy who looked on the verge of tears watching a salesman die. 

From about age sixteen onward he had dreamt of falling apart. It was something that Pilar had told him was normal -- he had been under pressures that normal children never had to face. It was more than that, and he knew it even when he could not articulate it outloud. It was not a byproduct of a fractured psyche. It was that he was a product of a larger fractured _self._

He belonged somewhere far away. John belonged to the same place. The same part of him that always knew how to break a heart or end a relationship - the part that knew the worst ways to hurt himself and others - that part knew that he and John were two of a kind. So it was that much easier to rest his hands on John’s arms and let the cold of his fingertips seep into his skin. Eventually he would press hard enough that all of this would stop -- that he could go home. 

_But I don’t want to die._

John’s fingers loosened on his throat and he settled back to sit on Bro’s chest, staring at him shivering and wild. 

“We aren’t supposed to be here.” 

Bro coughed violently, trying to come down off of the adrenaline spike that hit him from being attacked. Instead of punching John he rested his hands on John’s legs, staring up at him. John was chewing on his lip hard enough for blood to well up against the points that his teeth made contact. Bro did not feel charitable enough to disparage that. 

“The further that I get away ... from endgame. From where we belong, the more weird I feel. We’re just splinters.” The trees outside lashed, wind whistling through the street in unseasonable strength. 

_**I don’t want to die.** _

John turned back to watch him, his face lit from inside of his eyes. His glasses had been retrieved at some point. “You remember, don’t you?” 

Bro spoke the truth, forcing it out of himself. “I remember something. I remember that I don’t feel like I ever belonged here, but there was no way to get back.” 

“We’re in a reflection. There’s only one alpha-timeline anymore. There’s what happened when we got out of the game. And things went fractal out from there. You’re a splinter of someone that I know. A little tiny piece of them flew away after some stupid shit happened and I’ve been occupying myself in picking them up because I can. Because what the fuck is eternity when you didn’t graduate goddamn highschool? I went back and did that-- but it felt... bad. When you have literally punched the incarnation of Time in the fucking face then how do you show up at a football game?” John babbled and parts and pieces of what he talked about reminded Bro of dreams that he had woken from over the years. 

Bro raised an eyebrow. “You mentioned you’re an alternate. I guess we’re a pair in that. What does that mean for you, when you go back home, wherever that is? What does that mean for me?” 

“We go back to being the big part of our ultimate selves. We are added into a big joined experience that I guess constitutes godhood? I don’t have a clue how that works because the only guide-book that we even had for any of that crap was what Rose was writing as she was living it.” 

Bro’s fingers tightened on John’s knee. “I don’t want to die.” 

John reacted to the force of the statement almost as if he had been slapped. “But you’re not real.” 

“Like fuck I’m not.” Bro’s fingers tightened enough to make John twitch. “ _I don’t want to die_.” It was something that snaked through his mind like lightning, a primal fear linked to nightmares of being locked in a room with another version of himself standing outside of the room with accelerant and a match. 

He reiterated it enough to get the point through. “I do not give two hot fucks where it is that my cosmic essence or whatever came from, I lived this shithole of a life and I fought to make it better. This is my time and when I die I guess I’ll go and become final form Sephiroth or some shit, but until then no. I’m not going anywhere.” 

John’s jaw flexed. “But the problem... is that when we are away from our core selves... our powers start showing.” The pressure in the room changed enough to make Bro’s ears pop. The clouds outside rolled. “The further I am from the main timeline the more I feel like air. It’s not that I’m allergic to the floor, it’s that I forget that it’s something that has to do with me. I stop being myself.” John scrubbed a hand through his hair, yanking it into further disarray. 

“You don’t have the context to understand, but you are not you. You are dangerous. If I’m a natural disaster you are something that literally breaks souls.” 

Bro felt the indictment lodge itself in his ribs true as a knife. 

“I don’t care.” 

“That’s... not allowed. You gotta. We’re in charge.” John’s face had wrinkled up into a mimicry of outrage. It reminded him of when Dave was younger and struggling with a concept that he knew to be true, but did not care for. 

“Who says? _We’re in charge._ ” 

They sat quietly, trapped at odds. Bro wiggled up, balancing John by the hips so that he wouldn’t fall backward. His throat ached and he felt more present than he had in years. Since Dave left. Since Jake stopped speaking to him. 

“I’m not going back until I’m ready. I have things to finish up here, dude. I have things that I’ll bring back to the gestalt that will be of use. When did you say we played this game?” 

John’s voice was soft. “You were sixteen. We were thirteen.” 

Bro could not stop the ugly laugh that escaped out of his mouth. “Who in the hot fuck thought that it would be a great idea to let children whose brains hadn’t fucking finished developing have unlimited power?” 

“Snake aliens. If you really want to get down to it. Beyond that, we don’t actually know. They had a game of their own” John stared at him sullenly. “I get it, you know. How bug-fuck - heh - stupid it is. I’m fifty now.” 

Bro fought not to be extra shitty. “And you just recently are getting your GED. Congrats. Sometimes it takes some time.” 

“Fuck you.” 

Bro leered up at him. “Just did sugar. Gimme a sec to catch my breath and I think I’ve got a second go-round in me. But you’re getting tied to the bed. Two attempts on my life in one night is a performance review. We go hard in this house when it comes to murder, and you get your hands back when you show you know how to use them.” 

John shoved him and Bro fell backward with a thump. John followed the motion, laying himself out along Bro’s chest. His weight was solid and comfortable. The proportions of the man on of him changed. The distribution of his height shifted. He was tall and long and looked a great deal more like the man in the photograph. 

Bro scratched at the stubble along John’s neck appreciatively. “That’s a good look. How much flexibility with that do you have?” 

“Dunno. I can shift back into things that I’ve been. I don’t tend to move forward too much in time. Sometimes... I’m like this. Most of the time I’m kind of where I was at the end of the game. Depends on my mood. Or... something.” John gave an elegant shrug. The deeper tone of his voice rumbled against Bro’s chest and made his gut do a flip. There was the god of his ass right there. The younger face was sweet, but he had always been a fool for a strong man. This one was a bonus as he had hidden depths. 

Bro reached up, fluffing his hand through John’s hair before tightening his hand into a fist. John went still, hair caught in his fingers. “So I’mma tell you this right now. If you try to choke me out again I’m gonna drop you and you’re not gonna like what happens after that.” The threat was somewhat downplayed as John went hazy briefly, and Bro’s hand passed through him. The smirk sitting on his face made Bro even more irritable. 

Air tightened around them and Bro couldn’t draw a breath in. Panic set in and he forced himself to be still, watching the quietly indifferent expression on John’s face. The pressure released and John tilted his head. “You were saying?” 

“You have told me that I have powers. It is now going to be my singular goal in life to find out how to use them to fuck with you.” Bro drew in a deep breath, fighting to keep the discomfort out of his voice. 

John’s expression went wild for a brief second before calming. “You don’t even know what your aspect is dude. I think I’m safe.” 

Bro smirked. “I’m gifted and talented. Everyone in school said so. I’ll figure it.” There was not really a way to stop John from killing him if he really felt the inclination. Still, he did not get the sense that his impulsive companion was fully committed to his stated goal. 

“So... you don’t have to take me out right now, and you don’t have to go back. Not yet. Do you want to die?” The consequences of returning for both of them had not escaped his notice. He wondered after the version of John that had picked up the rifle. Where had he gone? Was there a body left? 

It was hard to read the expression on John’s face as he answered. “I can’t. Neither can you. Not really.” 

Bro shook his head. “ Even if you don’t want to be here right now... it ain’t forever. There’s always shit happening tomorrow. There’s different things.” He reached back to conversations about Pilar, about having to stare into a life devoid of direction and any sense of structure. 

“If you fucked up... well you’ve gotta sit with it. Make peace with it. Don’t do the same things again.” Bro wondered if John was a victim, not a predator, or if in his case there was an appreciable distinction. 

“If someone fucked up and it hurt you... you gotta do what you gotta do to make it less shitty. Sounds like you basically got sent to war when you were a teenager. That crap’ll do shit to your head. Doesn’t mean fucking rolling over. You left where you were for a reason. Stay here and hang out with me for a while. See what it’s like to roll through the world as an adult. And if you’re done with it, tag yourself out and take me with you.”

Bro wondered if he was speaking to himself. “But try it first. Don’t just give up.” 

John rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “You’re a lot more like Dirk than the other versions of you that I’ve met.” 

Bro had no idea what to say to that, and instead left John quiet to ponder in. John hummed lightly. 

“Shit. Why not.” He flopped down and rolled over to one side in a dramatic gesture. “You’re warm.” 

Bro let John settle onto his arm and curled his hand around his shoulder, easing back into the pillows and finding himself interested in what might come for the first time in a long time. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_I'm here at the beginning of the end_  
_Oh, the end of infinity with you_  
_I'm done with having dreams_  
_The thing that I believe_  
_Oh, you drain all the fear from me_  
_I'm done with having dreams_  



End file.
